Disabled Students Allowance

Support for disabled students at university generally comes from two different sources. One is the university itself, and there is more information about this in our DAS Guide to University Support & Adjustments. The other is through something called the Disabled Students Allowances (or DSA for short), which is funding provided by the government to cover the costs of any support you may need.

DSA – key facts

#1 DSA does not need to be paid back and is not means tested

#2 DSA is available to pay for support for students with mental health conditions, specific learning difficulties, long-term illnesses, visual and hearing impairments, Autism spectrum disorder and students with physical impairments.

#3 Around about 6% of all students in higher education (about 80,000 students) get support through the DSA

Why should you apply for DSA?

Good question – if the university is ensuring it is making any reasonable adjustments that disabled students need, do you also need funding for individual support? Perhaps not, but the DSA can crucially provide two things worth thinking about. Firstly, it provide is a package of support which is individually tailored to your specific requirements, and secondly it funds support that isn’t available through the university. Here’s a breakdown of how some of the support available through the university compares to options provided through the DSA:

A more comprehensive range of specialist software and equipment, plus funding toward the cost of a computer

What’s the catch?

There really isn’t one. The funding pays for the support rather than going directly to you, and doesn’t have to be paid back. It isn’t means tested, there is no age limit on applying and you can apply as an undergraduate or postgraduate student. It doesn’t affect your general student finance application, or your eligibility for any other funding sources. The process of applying has a couple of steps to go through, but isn’t too bureaucratic and it isn’t difficult to get approved for the support you need.

What can I get?

The funding is actually made up of four different components that fund different types of support – equipment, non-medical helper, general and travel. Before listing what may be available through each of these, there are three fundamental principles to understand when thinking about what you might get:

1) The DSA funds any additional study costs that a student incurs as a direct result of studying as a disabled student.

So, for example, a student may need to travel to hospital appointments when at university, meaning that they have additional travel costs to cover. However, because this cost is not directly related to their studying, it would not be covered by the DSA.

Alternatively, a student has a long-term back injury which means that they require specialist ergonomic seating when studying. As the cost of a specialist chair is due to the back injury and enables the student to study more effectively, this would be covered by the DSA.

2) The DSA provides the funding to cover the cost of the support needed, rather an amount of money to be used as needed.

In the examples above, if these situations related to the same student, they would not be permitted to use the money that was allocated to purchase an ergonomic chair and use this to pay for the travel to the hospital appointments.

So, with these guidelines in mind, here is an overview of what the DSA can fund:

Equipment

Money (about £150) towards the cost of a computer if you don’t already have one and if you are recommended any of the specialist programs marked with a * in the software section below

Printer/scanner/photocopier

Recording equipment (usually a microphone for your phone/laptop and specialist software but can also be a digital reorder)

Just to repeat – a student will not receive all of this, or even half. These are the options which are available to support different areas of disability-related difficulty. A student with dyslexia will not be eligible for an ergonomic chair or BSL interpreter and a student who is a wheelchair user will not be eligible for spelling software or a specialist mentor.

What can’t I get?

Essentially, anything that isn’t listed above falls outside the remit of the DSA, but to clarify, here is a list of things that sometimes student will think they may get funding towards but can’t:

Personal care costs (see our useful links page at the back)

Costs of travel to and from medical appointments (including counselling/therapy sessions)

Diagnostic costs, such as the cost of having an assessment of a specific learning difficulty / ADHD / Autism spectrum disorder

Books or internet costs (these were eligible for DSA funding many years ago, but no longer)

Someone to take notes in lectures for you (unless you are a student who is blind/visually impaired, or Deaf/hard of hearing)

Someone to help you in the library or in labs or to help you get around campus, or to provide proofreading support.

Ok, sounds interesting – what’s next?

There are three steps to the process. If this sounds like it could be a bit of a hassle, it really isn’t and you can get as much help as you need from the Disability Advisory Service. Also, it’s worth mentioning that part of the reason why you need to go through the process is that you are in charge of your support rather than someone deciding what is best for you

Apply to your funding body (usually Student Finance England) for the funding. This involves completing an application form and sending it with evidence of your specific learning difficulty, mental health condition, health condition or physical impairment.

Once your funding body has approved your application, you need to attend a needs assessment. This is where you get to find out about all of the different options available through the funding, see some of the software and equipment, and most importantly, you get to say what you need from the funding.

The recommendations made following the needs assessment then get reviewed by your funding body before being approved. You will then be informed of their decision (and usually the recommendations will be accepted) and given the information you need to arrange the support, such as who to order equipment from and who to contact to arrange one-to-one support.

What about funding for a computer, how does that work?

Some students may have heard that you can get a free laptop through the DSA and others may have heard that this has been scrapped. The truth is something between the two – if you are recommended certain pieces of software and do not have a suitable computer for running these programs, the DSA will provide you with funding towards the cost of a computer.

If you’re funded by Student Finance England or a Research Council, you will receive about £150 toward the cost of a computer. There are computers available through the funding which will cost you £200 (plus the contribution from Student Finance England) but you do not have to get one of these if you would like something different. However, if the cost of the computer that would like is more expensive, you have to pay the difference.

For example; a student gets recommended ClaroRead (text-to-speech software) to help with reading. They have an old (over five years) laptop which isn’t working reliably and so is eligible for some money through the DSA to replace it. The student would like a MacBook costing about £850, and so has to pay £700 themselves and claim the remainder back through the DSA.

For students funded by Student Finance Wales or the Student Awards Agency for Scotland, the full cost of a laptop can be funded through the DSA. However, this can’t be used to pay for any laptop that the student wants, it’s for a standard laptop available through the funding which costs about £350. Students still have the option to pay extra to choose something different, but can get a basic laptop without having to pay anything themselves.

Generally, the basic laptops that you get either for the £200 contribution (SFE) or paid for completely (SFW and SAAS) fall into the category of ‘you get what you pay for’. They cost around £350, and although technically meet the specification needed to run any of the software that will have been recommended, many students have provided feedback that they are not very good laptops. There is a caveat to this – if you look after it, are careful about what is installed on to it, and do some basic maintenance now and again, the laptops should be sufficient for most students’ needs. However, if you want a better computer, and can afford it, use the option to pay more to do so. There is also the flexibility within the system to allow you to purchase a computer from any supplier you choose, so it is well worth considering how you may get something that you are happy with for the duration of your course.

How to apply

You can apply at any point on your course, or from about February of the year that you have applied to start university in. How you apply depends of who is funding your course and there are also different forms to complete depending on whether you receive core student finance funding: